A scientific theory on what makes conservatives different from the rest of us

Tuesday

Jul 22, 2014 at 11:05 AMJul 22, 2014 at 1:35 PM

The journal Behavorial and Brain Sciences has been sorting through various studies on why political conservatives are the way they are and has reached THIS CONCLUSION, among others:

A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics.

That’s a big deal. It challenges everything that we thought we knew about politicsóupending the idea that we get our beliefs solely from our upbringing, from our friends and families, from our personal economic interests, and calling into question the notion that in politics, we can really change (most of us, anyway)…

[T]he conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facetsócentered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of gunsówould seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology.

The journal Behavorial and Brain Sciences has been sorting through various studies on why political conservatives are the way they are and has reached THIS CONCLUSION, among others:

A large body of political scientists and political psychologists now concur that liberals and conservatives disagree about politics in part because they are different people at the level of personality, psychology, and even traits like physiology and genetics.

That’s a big deal. It challenges everything that we thought we knew about politicsóupending the idea that we get our beliefs solely from our upbringing, from our friends and families, from our personal economic interests, and calling into question the notion that in politics, we can really change (most of us, anyway)…

[T]he conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facetsócentered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of gunsówould seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology.